As the Internet of things becomes an important part of wireless communications technologies, a market requirement for the Internet of things increases rapidly. The Internet of things includes a large quantity of terminals, and the terminals have different path losses and penetration losses due to different positions of the terminals. Therefore, a protocol related to the Internet of things supports a plurality of coverage classes for being applicable to different terminals. A network side configures resource information for a terminal according to a coverage class of the terminal, so that a network can page the terminal, and data transmission is implemented between the network and the terminal.
In the prior art, there is no dedicated procedure for supporting a coverage class report of a terminal in a disconnected state such as an idle state. In this case, a limitation on communication between the terminal and a network or communication resource waste is caused.